This is the Life.

Walked to the beach today... I think the pictures speak for themselves.

I LOVE LIVING HERE.

Wishing on a Star

I am officially caught up in school!!

I took my last midterm this morning. After missing so much school two weeks ago to go back to IL, this last week was beyond stressful and busy. Life has absolutely been kicking me and my family's butt over the last few months and my mom decided she wanted a break.

Last minute Disneyland trip it is! 

My family is going to swing by Santa Cruz on their way down next Friday to pick me up. I couldn't be more excited!

Funny thing is, I just got caught up in school and now I'm going to miss more class to go to Disneyland. Totally worth it though! 

My family is the best!

Me and My sister in 2008

Emerita Analoga

Last week in lab, we dissected the sand crab!!

At the center of the table we have a live crab and then we each have our own anesthetized crab to explore. I realized during this dissection how sad this is. The live one sits in the middle of the table and watches its friends while we cut into them and removed their organs. Then again, it doesn't have a brain. 

During our live observation, I realized it was swimming backwards with these paddle like appendages located by its hind end. They live on the beach where the waves break. They burrow backwards in the sand and release these long feather-like antennae used for filter feeding into the water during receding waves.

Not as exciting of a dissection, we cut a square in the carapace and removed certain organs to view certain systems and make our required drawings. Mine was female, all the orange stuff inside  are eggs.

At about three hours into the lab, the fire alarm went off. The class heads outside and eventually the fire department shows up. After about 20 minutes, it was determined a false alarm and we could go back inside. I was thinking maybe we would get to go home and the last drawing wouldn't be required. But Nope! We had to stay until we finished. 

Next week, we are dissecting a marine worm.

We had a midterm in exercise physiology so the professor decided to cancel lab for the week so I don't have any exciting exercise torture to share with you this week.

Introducing Specter

This is Specter!

He is 3 years old

Specter is wearing his falcon hood because he is not used to being in a class setting. He is one of Sophie's many sons. He is actually a hybrid between a gyrfalcon and a Peregrine falcon. This type of hybrid cross makes for very good hunters. He was bred to become a falconry bird. Falconry is a form of hunting where a trained bird works with a human to catch game.

Two weeks ago in falcon class we learned all about peregrine falcon behavior. The thing I found most interesting were all the behaviors that go into reproduction. Peregrines pair up and generally keep the same mate from year to year. Each breeding season the male performs these spectacular aerial displays and brings the female food offerings and they each perform certain body movements and sounds for each other. Their actual copulation takes place during a free fall. They fly up really high together and mate on their way back down. So cool!!

We also heard an interesting story that day.

There was a lone peregrine male living living in Idaho. One year, a female showed up from Alaska. She was just visiting Idaho to escape the Alaska weather for a few weeks but the male was very excited to see her. He set out to court her in every possible way that he could think of. Problem was that she was just visiting and had no interest in breeding or taking up residency in Idaho. For weeks, he was putting on fantastic aerial shows and chirping and bowing in just the right way. That male piled up 132 dead birds for her in her nest area. 132 dead animals! And you know what that female did for all his efforts?
She went back to Alaska.

Something Squishy #2

The Banana Slug!

The UC Santa Cruz mascot is the banana slug.
Most people think this is a very odd and unimpressive mascot (I certainly think so) because it basically is. But Santa Cruz is a unique and special place full of unique and special people so I suppose a unique and special mascot is appropriate.

And here is a bit of banana slug info that you absolutely can go on living your life with out ever knowing. And you probably don't want to know. But I'm going to tell you anyways! 

Banana slugs are simultaneous hermaphrodites. This means that each individual slug has both male and female reproduction organs. While they have the ability to self fertilize and clone themselves, more often they will go find another slug to mate with as long as the opportunity presents itself. 

So... Two slugs are in the forest and run into each other. They get to know each other a little bit and before you know it they are producing a huge amount of mucus and slimming each other up. They get down to the dirty and they both begin inseminating the other. Once all the fun is done it's time to get going; slugs prefer a one night stand situation. They don't like to get too invested but sometimes, nature thinks it can force things to happen. Very often one or both of the banana slug penises will become stuck inside the other individual. No worries though, Banana slugs are problem solvers! 

The simple solution: Chew it off.

One slug will chew off the stuck slug's penis and then continue on their merry way. Perhaps it will mate again or just go lay its eggs or eat a snack. Meanwhile the other slug slinks away to regrow its appendages and mate another day. 

It's a rough life being a banana slug.

Off Course

This picture is from a few weeks ago, I thought I would share. It was an interesting sight.

A boat washed up on the beach overnight down by the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk

 The last two weeks have been extremely crazy and right now I'm just trying to get back on track because currently I am feeling a lot like that boat up there.
*Cue pity laugh here*

So now for an update on school for the week of January 29th through February 4th.
Monday, we had a new falcon visit the class and got he hear a lot of cool stories. I will post about that sometime this weekend hopefully.

Unfortunately, because I had a lot of other things on my mind that week, I failed to take any pictures of cool things I did in class... even though they weren't really all that cool.

In exercise lab, we had our EKGs taken and did an exercise recovery test. The Electrocardiogram (EKG) shows my heart pumping. The peaks and dips in the lines represent the contractions and recovery in my heart.

This is my heart!

My heart was going a little fast that day. Not sure if it was from nerves or stress. The large sharp peak represents my ventricles contracting pumping blood to my body. For a girl, my line is very tall. Because I have played soccer my whole life my heart has adjusted to the need and is therefore larger than average. I thought this was really cool.

For my exercise lab's recovery test, we took a resting heart rate, blood pressure,  and respiration rate and then went and ran for five mins. Then while I am sweaty and struggling to breath, my lab partners take my blood pressure and heart rate and count my breaths over specific intervals to track my recovery. Pretty simple. Nothing exciting. But I must say, it was loads less stressful compared to last week's "Power Assessment".

In my Invertebrates lab, this week, we got together in partners and dissected a mussel (mytilus californianus) and a clam (venus mercenaria). I was responsible for the mussel. We had to make 11, that's right 11, drawings that night. Normally I don't mind working in partners at all. But lab goes until 9pm and I had the prospect of driving home that night, getting 3 hours of sleep and then getting to my fight that left at 6am the next morning looming over my head. I spent a lot of that night drawing quickly and badly and then waiting on my partner who was taking days!

So sorry I have no pictures of the dissection! It was petty cool though. Like the snail, most of the mussel's body was taken up by it's gonad (the gamete producer) so it was clear that they put a lot of effort into reproduction.

Reproduction seems to be a very important reoccurring theme in my studies since I started college. It seems to be the sole purpose of most living organisms. They are born, they reproduce, they die. As long as they reproduced, life was a success. Ugh, It sounds like my sister! I'm stubborn and I'm not having kids.

More updates to come.

Some Sad News

Sorry I haven't updated the blog in a while.

I received news on Tuesday the 31st that my grandmother passed away. It was fairly unexpected and certainly not the kind of news that you want to hear. She, as does most of my family, lives in Southern Illinois. My sister and I flew out last Friday morning to join my parents who flew out a couple of days previously. We got back Tuesday night.

Me and Grandma

2007

Glad she is finally back together with Grandpa

She was an amazing, strong woman and I will never forget her laugh or her stories. My heart goes out to my mom more than anything. I can only imagine what she is going though. I admire her for staying so strong though all of as well as having to make all of the preparations. I don't know how she does it.

It was a very hard and stressful visit but it was so great to see family again. I know a lot of them are reading my blog now. I am so glad that I get to share a small part of my life with them. My family means a lot to me and I am thankful for each moment I get to spend with them even if it a very small amount of time.